Suffolk's Gardens and Parks

Designed Landscapes from the Tudors to the Victorians

Tom Williamson

This table gives the books price, published date, ISBN reference and other details
Price:	£20.00
Published:	20 September 2000
ISBN:	0-9538630-0-X
Details:	PB, 246 x 185 mm, 224 pp, 20 colour plates, 50 black and white illustrations

Synopsis

Suffolk deserves a special mention in garden and landscape history. Some of the greatest names in English landscape architecture, such as 'Capability' Brown, Humphry Repton, William Andrews Nesfield and Sir Charles Barry, were instrumental in creating the county's gardens and parks. In this book Tom Williamson explores how the landscapes we admire today at places such as Ickworth, Shrubland, and Somerleyton came into existence. He explores the fashions that determined their design, and shows how they reveal much about the past: as expressions of the landed elite's world-view, and as evidence of the economy and society which produced them.

Williamson takes the reader through a fascinating history of garden and park design and creation, from the Renaissance precision of Elizabethan Melford Hall to the drama of Bawdsey Manor, laid out on the windswept coast early in the twentieth century. The story has many themes: the influence of continental fashionon the Restoration garden; the proliferation of parks in the mid-eighteenth century, culminating in 'Capability' Brown's work at Ickworth; Humphry Repton's development of his picturesque style at estates such as Glenham; the magnificent new Victorian gardens at Shrubland and Somerleyton; and the impact of the 'Arts and Crafts' style on Suffolk's gardens. The author also explains the domestic economy of the Victorian garden, where small armies of gardeners and nursurymen laboured with implements and techniques that are unfamiliar to us today, and the kitchen garden supplied the house with fresh food.

The book not only shows how trends in garden and landscape design were played out in a particular corner of England; it also sheds light on parks and gardens as symbolic landscapes, proclaiming and reinforcing social divisions in a very unequal world.

Reviews

'Considerably more than just an introduction to Suffolk's designed landscapes ... a formidable achievement.'Landscape History 'For anyone who has Suffolk connections or any interest in the countryside's past, this is a book to be read and kept for reference. ... Suffolk is fortunate to have this history; other counties should feel envious.' Country Life